The Women’s Movement and the Settlement
Movement in Early Twentieth-Century Japan :
The Impact of Hull House and Jane Addams on
Hiratsuka Raicho
journal or
publication title
Kwansei Gakuin University humanities review
number
17
page range
85-109
year
2013-02-18
The Women’s Movement and the Settlement Movement
in Early Twentieth-Century Japan:
The Impact of Hull House and Jane Addams on Hiratsuka Raicho¯
Konomi IMAI*
Introduction
The settlement movement started in Britain in the late nineteenth century and then spread all over the industrialized world; social movements that descended from it continue even now. In the settlement movement, academics moved from universities to live in the slums, where they would work with low-paid laborers and immigrants, in other words, the poorest class.1)
The intellectuals, through direct contact, attempted to help the poor improve their living conditions and become more independent, and also worked for the improvement of the regional environment and for social reform. The turn of the century was especially plagued
────────────────────────────────────────── * Professor, School of Human Welfare Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University
1 ) English references that facilitated the translation of this paper include the following:
−Jan Bardsley, The Bluestockings of Japan: New Woman Essays and Fiction from Seito, 1911− 16 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2007).
−Vera Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900−1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
−Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
−Ylknuker Oner, “Settlement Houses,” in International Encyclopedia of Social Policy, ed. in chief Tony Fitzpatrick, eds. Huck-ju Kwon et al. (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2006), 1193−1194.
−Hiratsuka Raicho¯, In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
−Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983).
−Rolland F. Smith, “Settlements and Neighborhood Centers,” in Encyclopedia of Social Work, 19th ed., ed. in chief Richard L. Edwards (Washington, DC: National Association of Social Workers Press, 1995), 2129−2135.
Kwansei Gakuin University Humanities Review
Vol. 17, 2012 Nishinomiya, Japan
with social problems; huge efforts, mainly in Britain and America, were made to solve them.2)
The new residents lived in the communities, shared burdens with their neighbors, undertook surveys to identify needs, and worked to solve problems they had identified. They heavily influenced social policy of the time.
Later, many countries began to be influenced by the British welfare state─for example, by the work of William Henry Beveridge, who wrote the report that came to be known by his name. He had been subwarden of Britain’s most representative settlement, Toynbee Hall (1903−05).3)
By contrast, America adopted a maternalistic form of social welfare state,4)
a school of thought that spread at the state level at the beginning of the twentieth century to include provision of what was called a Mothers’ Pension (also known as Mothers’ Aid).5)
The Hull House settlement contributed to the precedent by advocating the establishment of a Mothers’ Pension in the state of Illinois.
In this way, especially in Britain and America, social policy was greatly affected by the settlement movement, but there was one difference between the movements in those two countries: in Britain, men took the lead; in America, women did.6)
For example, Toynbee Hall was led by male professors and male students from Cambridge and Oxford; Hull House was founded and managed by Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr. At that time, the core of Hull House was women of high academic credentials whose activities in society were otherwise circumscribed”; it became a base for a community of such women and a place for them to direct their energies. For some, it became a stepping-stone to other careers.7)
This paper will show that at the beginning of the twentieth century, Shinfujin Kyokai (the New Women’s Association), founded by the symbol of the Japanese women’s movement, Hiratsuka Raicho¯,8)
was built on the model of Hull House.Hull House, as part of the social reform movement, showed how to actively improve the conditions of the working poor; one of the institution’s activities was to lobby for financial support for mothers, including mothers’ assistance to enable mothers to concentrate on childrearing. From the time of Seito¯ (Bluestocking), Hiratsuka Raicho¯
────────────────────────────────────────── 2 ) Encyclopedia of Social Work, 19th Ed.
3 ) Maurice Bruce, Coming of the Welfare State (London: Batsford, 1961).
4 ) Theda Skocpol and Gretchen Retter, “Gender and the Origins of Modern Social Policies in Britain and the United States,” Studies in American Political Development 5 (Spring 1991). 5 ) Gwendolyn Mink, The Wage of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917−1942
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 3.
6 ) Ellen Carol Dubois and Lynn Dumenil, Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 366.
7 ) Kathryn Kish Sklar, “Hull House in the 1890’s: A Community of Women Reformers,” SIGNS 10 (Summer 1985), 660.
8 ) Hiratsuka, In the Beginning.
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continued to be involved with women’s issues─specifically, the expansion of the rights of female workers and development of a base for mothers’ rights (for which she chose Hull House as a model). However, until recently, although some feminist researchers had done good work on the relationship between the New Women’s Association and the suffrage movement, there was an aspect of the commitment to women workers and mothers’ rights that was abstract, and the Association’s roots as a settlement organization had been forgotten. Still, at that time, the phrase maternal protection did not have its recent narrow meaning of “protecting female workers from the viewpoint of their maternal functions through the law.” Taking a broad perspective, it included the social welfare of women and children.9)
As a result, due to the vigorous leadership of an important member of the New Women’s Association, Ichikawa Fusae, the Association made obtaining suffrage for women its main priority, and it managed to obtain political reform allowing women a certain modicum of freedom; Ichikawa’s success is plain to see. Moreover, she went to America and saw Hull House operate with her own eyes. After she returned to Japan, she committed herself to the women’s movement; she led those who wanted women to participate in governmental activities. On the other hand, the mothers’ rights movement benefited from continuing support, from the birth of the Association, from Yamada Waka. Moreover, Yamada contributed to the 1937 Boshi Hogo Ho (Mother and Child Protection Act); she had been influenced by the Illinois Mothers’ Pension system. In addition, the starting point of the New Women’s Association had been the goal of establishing a settlement; one of the Association’s directors, Oku Mumeo, was a driving force in the realization of that goal.
In these ways, the Hull House settlement-related activities had a great impact on the women’s movement in Japan before World War II and its influence on social policy. Research up until now has pointed out how the women’s movement in Japan was influenced by its counterpart in America. However, the influence of the settlement movement has not been touched on. The settlement movement in Japan emerged from the activity of men and women, both Japanese and foreign. However, Hull House and Jane Addams had a particular impact on Hiratsuka Raicho¯─a leading women’s liberationist in Japan and in the New Women’s Association (1919
────────────────────────────────────────── 9 ) This term is also used to mean activities on behalf of mothers’ rights; the enactment of the Boshi Fujo Ho (Mothers’ Pension) was a part of this. The laws enacting mothers’ pension, assistance, and child allowance had at that time almost the same meaning. In the Japanese case, nominally under the Boshi Hogo Ho (Mother and Child Protection Act), results can be seen; however, the model was the Mothers’ Pension of Illinois state. The women’s movement was used to name what became the Boshi Fushi Ho (Mother and Child Assistance Act). On the other hand, at the same time, the Interior Ministry, cognizant of the state of Illinois’s Mothers’ Pension system, created the name Jidou Fujo Hou (Act Providing Child Assistance).
−1922), the organization that she established. I will consider the progress and limits of the settlement movement and, further, demonstrate Addams’s influence upon the women’s movement in Japan.
1. Settlement Enterprises and Hull House
The history of the settlement movement begins in Victorian Britain. At that time in Britain, accompanying the development of capitalism came a growing gap between the rich and poor; slum areas appeared in big cities, and social problems became more serious. Under these circumstances, charitable organizations became active. Among them, the Charity Organisation Society (COS) of London is thought to have been founded in 1869. Providing assistance on an individual basis, its member organizations attempted to make sure that the poor had their needs met and were provided with the means to become independent. Programs included visiting the poor in their homes (the “friendly visitor”) and conducting surveys of which methods of assistance would be introduced; these became pioneering social work initiatives. This approach soon spread all over Britain, and even to America. However, the thinking of the COS was that the cause of poverty was a low level of individual morality, and as a result, its effectiveness as an organization was limited. In contrast, the newly arising settlement movement held that the cause of poverty was in the social environment. University lecturers, students, and other intellectuals came to live in the slums, have personal exchanges with their new neighbors, attempt through education to solve the problems of poverty, and improve the neighborhood with the ultimate goal of social reform. In 1884, a priest at a church in a slum, Samuel Augustus Barnett, and his wife, Henrietta Barnett, founded Toynbee Hall. Toynbee Hall is said to be the first settlement house, a pioneering effort in the way it attempted to solve the problems of the working poor: improving their environment, educating them, and ameliorating the social system itself. It attempted to solve many problems through education. The Oxford University historian Arnold Toynbee, while participating in the planning of the project, died at the young age of 30. In commemoration of his work, the settlement bears his name. It was completed soon after his death. Cambridge and Oxford University lecturers, students, and graduates expanded their activities at Toynbee Hall; eventually, for the male students, this experience would become a launching pad for a political career. It is said that this is because the British settlement movement was led by men in contrast with Hull House. As mentioned previously, the man who designed the British welfare state, William Beveridge, worked as subwarden at Toynbee Hall; he is a representative example of men whose careers were launched there.
By contrast, the settlement movement in America was led by women. At that
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time in America, accepted professions for women were generally limited to teaching and missionary work. Highly educated, middle-class women were faced with the problem of how to put their education to use. One of the ways these women did put their education to use was to join and promote the activities of a Charity Organization Society (COS) in the United States through friendly visits, both to develop the independence of the individual pauper and to contribute to society. From those friendly-visitor records, social case work skills developed and independence was promoted. Alternatively, for those in the settlement movement, there were women committed to the improvement of society. “In the late 1880s and early 1890s, the social settlement movement was the right movement at the right time for this first generation of college-educated women, who were able to gain only limited entry to the male-dominated professions of law, politics or academics.”10)
A representative example is the founding of Hull House. In 1889, Hull House was established by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Like many of the women of the time, “filled with shame that with all my apparent leisure I do nothing,”11)
Addams eventually came upon the settlement enterprise. The turning point was during a pleasure trip to Europe, after a bullfight she had witnessed in Spain. Notwithstanding the cruelty of the scene, Addams thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle. Later, she felt deep remorse, however, and reflected on what she had experienced. Next, she visited Toynbee Hall of London. Having contact with those active there, she came to an understanding of what those who were blessed financially should do. After returning to America in 1889, she founded Hull House in Chicago with Starr, a friend from her school days. The main activities were addressing the problems of immigrants, children, and women workers. To these ends, various programs were adopted to further worker education and cultural activities; survey results formed the basis for the social reform activities undertaken. Moreover, Hull House was built against the backdrop of a society in which, in terms of employment, gender roles were based on deeply rooted stereotypes; accordingly, professional opportunities for women were limited. The settlement became a venue for capable women to pour their energies into a good cause and gave them a foothold in the working world. At the time of its establishment, it was a charitable organization where love of one’s fellow human beings and Christian ideas could be put into action; however, after the participation of the socialist Florence Kelley, the focus changed to the contradictions of the industrial structure and ways to solve
────────────────────────────────────────── 10) Sklar, “Hull House in the 1890s”, 664.
11) Scott, Anne Firor. “Jane Addams.” in Making the Invisible Woman Visible (University of Illinois Press, 1984), 112.
social problems. Hull House became a base from which social reform activity grew. The organization contributed to the enacting of legislation for the protection of children, women, and workers, and at the same time, it worked on what had become a big social problem in Illinois: at-risk youth. This work included developing thinking on the type of facilities should be built to deal with such youth and lobbying for the establishment of a juvenile court system; Hull House’s efforts bore fruit. Moreover, as a backdrop to this problem, there was a growing realization that policies to enable working mothers to quit their jobs and concentrate on child rearing were needed. Hull House worked toward these ends; as a result, in 1911, the state of Illinois began the Mothers’ Pension system.
Addams was influenced by her father’s friend Abraham Lincoln and by John Dewey of the University of Chicago; through the activities of Hull House, she wanted to try to put democracy into action. “As a community of women, Hull House provided its members with a lifelong substitute for family life.”12)
Furthermore, as the enterprise found its path, Addams used Hull House as a base from which the women’s and peace movements could actively interact with the community. In 1931, her excellent results received recognition in the form of the Nobel Peace prize. According to Addams, peace is an absolute prerequisite for guaranteeing people happiness, and she expected women to play a large role in protecting that peace. However, in the latter half of the 1910s, America traveled on an imperialistic path; accordingly, Hull House was criticized as a hotbed of “reds.” This reputation only worsened as Addams devoted the rest of her life to the women’s and peace movements.
In this way, the activities of Addams and Hull House had a great influence on the Japanese women’s movement. A practical example will be delineated in the next section. First, though, how were settlements introduced, started, and developed in Japan? Let us take an overview.
2. Development of the Settlement Enterprise in Japan
The Japanese settlement movement began during the Meiji period (1868− 1912).13)
The Meiji period emerged as a result of domestic turmoil sparked by the
────────────────────────────────────────── 12) Sklar, “Hull House in the 1890”, 660.
13) For more on the history of settlements in Japan, see Onda Masami, “Waga kuni settsurumento jigyo¯ no kaiko to tenbo¯” (“A Review of Settlement Work in Our Country”), Shakai Mondai Kenkyu¯ (Study of Social Issues) 8, no.2 (April 1958); Ichibangase Yasuko, “Nihon settsurumento shi sobyo¯” (“A Brief History of Japanese Settlements”), Nihon Joshi Daigaku kiyo¯ (Japan Women’s University Journal) 13 (1963); Nishiuchi Kiyoshi, Nihon settsurumento kenkyu¯ josetsu (Tokyo: Doshinsha, 1971); Tsuji Yutaka, “Senzen Nihon ni okeru settsurumento no tenkai to kyo¯iku” (“Education and the Development of Settlements in Pre-war Japan”), !
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ruling Tokugawa (1603−1867) family’s inability to resist Western pressure to end its closed-door policy. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan was reconstituted as a state under the emperor. The Meiji government sought to create a modern nation-state (under the slogan “rich country, strong army”) and hurried to establish a centralized government, heavy industry, and a capitalist economy. To do this, the government aggressively incorporated Western culture, but it also carried over the previous Tokugawa shogunate’s policy of persecuting Christianity. However, once the ban on Christianity was rescinded, many Western missionaries began to arrive in Japan; in addition to evangelism, they engaged in educational and relief work.14)
During this period, economic support systems established under the military government ceased functioning, and the condition of the poor became a serious problem. However, the government relied upon traditional family and community networks to provide mutual support and made modernizing the nation its first priority, meaning that its policies addressing poverty were anemic. Missionaries who had traveled to Japan to evangelize were confronted with the sight of masses wallowing in poverty. In 1874, the first relief measure for the destitute, the Jyukkyu¯ Kisoku (Poor-Relief Regulation) was established.15)
However, this was presented as being based not on government responsibility to the indigent, but instead on the emperor’s benevolence toward his subjects, and it was limited in its implementation.16)
Settlement work in Japan developed within this context and was initiated by foreign Christians as well as private organizations. Some examples of such
────────────────────────────────────────── ! Ko¯chi Daigaku Kyo¯iku Gakubu Kenkyu¯ Ho¯koku Dai-ichi Bu (Kochi University Department of
Education Research Report Part One) 45 (1992).
14) In response to censure from Western countries over its persecution of Christians, in 1873 the Meiji government removed the signboards proclaiming the prohibition of Christianity and accepted the practice of Christianity. Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 359.
15) Poor relief was established under the authority of the Dajokan (Council of State, an early system of governmental organization that was disbanded by the mid-Meiji period). The Kyugoho (Poor Relief Law) was established in 1929 but not implemented until 1932; until then this was the only law providing for the needy. It was overseen by the Ministry of Home Affairs and was a law that provided money for rice, but it applied only to individuals in abject poverty ─those who were either over 70 years of age and critically ill, senile, disabled, or with illness, or children under thirteen who had no family upon whom to rely and who lacked any employable skills. Ikeda Yoshimasa, Nihon shakaifukushi-shi (Kyoto: Ho¯ritsu bunkasha, 1986), 190−198; Ikeda Yoshimasa and Ikemoto Miwako, Nihon fukushi-shi kogi (Kokan shuppan, 2002), 80−82; Murota Yasuo, and Kikuchi Masaharu, eds., Nihon shakai fukushi no rekishi (Kyoto: Mineruva shobo, 2003), 24−25.
16) For more on English-language scholarship on the history of social welfare in Japan, see Kojun Furukawa, Social Welfare in Japan: Principles and Applications (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2008) 17−46.
organizations are the Okayama Hakuaikai (Humanitarian Society), founded by missionary Alice Pettee Adams, which provided childcare and classes for the poverty-stricken, and the Jiaikan (Home for Fallen Women), founded in 1894 by the foreign auxiliary of the Japanese Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WTCU), which engaged in relief work among impoverished women and prostitutes.17)
The most well-known settlement house established by a Japanese person was Kingsley Hall, founded in 1897 in the Kanda area of Tokyo by Katayama Sen, a Christian socialist. Katayama hoped to inspire Japanese workers in a newly industrializing Japan to recognize their own potential, and he founded the hall in order to bring about social reform. Katayama had gone to the United States in 1884 and, over the course of eleven years, studied at various schools, including Yale University. It has been argued that Katayama was also influenced by a trip he took to England during a school break, where he visited Toynbee Hall and observed the activities taking place there. The main programs at Kingsley Hall were child care and education for the poor.18)
Because of Katayama’s interest in labor issues, however, his church supporters suspended their donations, and the hall was forced to close down a few years later.
Another example of a Japanese settlement worker is Kagawa Toyohiko, discussed later, a Christian social reformer who in 1909 moved to the slums of Kobe. Except for a period spent in the United States (1914−1917), Kagawa lived in the Shinkawa slums alongside the needy until he moved to Tokyo in 1923 to conduct relief work following the Great Kanto Earthquake. His work during the time in Kobe has been considered settlement work.19)
Only a few settlement houses were established in this early period (1897−1918), and those that existed were run either by Christian individuals or Christian organizations, so they should be considered religious settlements. This period from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century has been considered Japan’s industrialization period.
────────────────────────────────────────── 17) Manako Ogawa, “‘Hull House’ in Downtown Tokyo: The Transplantation of a Settlement House from the United States into Japan and the North American Missionary Women, 1919− 1945,” Journal of World History 15, no.3 (2004): 359−387.
18) Nishiuchi Kiyoshi, Nihon setsurumento kenkyu¯ josetsu (Tokyo: Doshinsha, 1971), 30.For more on Katayama Sen, see Hyman Kublin, Asian Revolutionary: The Life of Sen Katayama (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964); Katayama Sen, The Labor Movement in Japan (Chicago: C. H. Kerr & Company, 1918); and Katayama Sen, Jiden (Tokyo: self-published, 1954).
19) Kagawa Toyohiko, “Hinminkutsu shokuminkan jigyo¯ ni tsuite” (“On the Work of Slum Settlements), Shakai jigyo¯ kenkyu¯ 7, no.6 (July 1918). Recent scholarship (by Dohi Akio and Fujino Yutaka, for example) has evaluated Kagawa Toyohiko’s relief work in conjunction with Kagawa’s discriminatory attitude towards Burakumin (people descended from those labeled outcasts during the Tokugawa period, who continued to be discriminated against after the feudal class system was abolished) as well as his ethnonationalism.
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The growth phase of settlement houses in Japan (1918−1930) coincided with the period when the contradictions inherent in capitalism came to be acknowledged as a social problem. The rice riots of 1918, the result of the people’s venting their anger over their financial instability, frightened a government already anxious after the success of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. Also, as it became more commonly accepted that poverty was not due to an individual’s failures, but was the result of systemic social problems, settlement houses were increasingly seen as a potential solution to the labor problem. The government was slow to respond to social welfare needs. For example, a new relief law, the Kyu¯go Ho (Poor Relief Law) was promulgated in 1929 but not implemented until 1932. It replaced the previous Jyukkyu¯ Kisoku (Poor Relief Regulation), the “first law creating public aid for the needy,” and it was based on the assumption that the government had an obligation to provide for those in financially straitened circumstances.20)
In addition, the law was “full of loopholes and far from sufficient to meet the needs of the poor.”21)
Instead, the law looked to private institutions: older, Christian settlements as well as newer, secular settlements organized by university faculty and students. There was also the emergence of a type of “public” settlement house unique to Japan.22)
According to a study conducted by the Ministry of Home Affairs, by 1929, there were 97 settlement houses, of which 80 were privately operated (by religious, not-for-profit, and private organizations), and 17 were publicly operated. By the following year, the total number had grown to 115, with 28 publicly operated.
In 1921, the city of Osaka established Osaka Shiritsu Shiminkan (the Osaka municipal citizens’ hall). This was the first publicly operated settlement house. Known in English as Kita Neighborhood House, the settlement provided medical care, child care, senior services, and a pawn shop (to prevent people from being cheated by private shops). It had an ongoing relationship with Hull House: its founders had studied both Toynbee Hall and Hull House, Jane Addams visited it during her 1923 world tour, and Hull House sent representatives to a ceremony in 1948.23)
────────────────────────────────────────── 20) Ogawa, 374.
21) Ogawa, 374−375.
22) Publicly operated settlements were initiated as a system for influencing and reforming regional lower classes as a way of addressing the social unrest best represented by the rice riots. It has been argued that this type of settlement is unique to Japan. See Ikeda Yoshimasa, Nihon shakaifukushi shi (Kyoto: Ho¯ritsu bunkasha, 1986), 584. For more on the particular characteristics of Japanese settlements, see Masami Nagaoka, “A History of the Social Settlement Movement in Japan” (English Version), O¯ sakashi shakai fukushi kenkyu 30 (2007): 115−123.
23) Presentation by Hata Tomoko, Museum of Housing and Living, on the site of the former Kita Neighborhood House, Osaka, July 28, 2003; personal communication from Margaret Strobel; !
The most representative example of a university settlement is the Tokyo Imperial University Settlement, which was established under the direction of law professors Hozumi Shigeto and Suehiro Izutaro¯ as part of relief efforts following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Apparently, these two professors were influenced by Toynbee Hall, which they visited on a trip to England. The influence of its cofounder, Canon Samuel Barnett, on their thought is unmistakable in their concern for the way in which labor and knowledge had become disassociated in Japanese society, as well as in their declaration in the settlement’s founding statement that it was “the duty of the fortunate elite” who had received higher education to share their knowledge with those less fortunate.24)
The Tokyo Imperial University Settlement focused on education of laborers; its other activities included social research, youth education, a health clinic, child care, legal advice, and publishing.
As the nation entered into a state of total war, however, settlements, along with other liberal or radical institutions, came under increasing governmental scrutiny. The Tokyo Imperial University Settlement, for example, was forced to close in 1938. With the outbreak of Japan’s war with China (1937−1945), Japan entered into full-scale mobilization; the government increased its funding for welfare and relief work through Shakai Jigyo¯ Ho¯ (the Social Work Law) in 1938, but this led to greater government control and the alignment of existing settlements’ work with the war effort. Moreover, when compared with actual costs, even this increase in funding was inadequate.25)
Only after the end of World War II could the settlement movement begin anew.
Settlements, if relatively small in number, were an important source of social reform in modernizing Japan. In particular, Hull House as a settlement, and Jane Addams as an individual, served as significant models for promoting social reform in the women’s movement in Japan. An examination of the institutional and individual relationships provides a window into the international networks and transnational influences of progressive female reformers in the early decades of the twentieth century.
As noted earlier, at the end of the nineteenth century, American missionaries in Japan began settlement-like activities, but with the start of the twentieth century, Japanese women became involved as well, and the settlement movement began in
────────────────────────────────────────── ! Nagaoka Masami, “The Life of Shinato Shiga and His Thought on Social Work,” in Shiga Shinato Workshop and Uda Kikue, eds., The Thought and Practice of Shinato Shiga: As Eminent Pioneer of Social Welfare in Osaka (Osaka: Izumi Shoin, 2006), 26−31.
24) See Onda Masami, “Waga kuni setsurumento jigyo¯ no kaiko to tenbo¯,” (“A Review of Settlement Work in Our Country) Shakai Mondai Kenkyu¯ (Study of Social Issues) 8, no.2 (1958): 9−10.
25) See Ikeda, Nihon shakaifukushi-shi, 748−751; Ogawa, 381−382.
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earnest. The Ko¯bo¯kan Settlement was founded in 1919 by the Tokyo Circle of the Foreign Auxiliary of the Japanese WCTU, but it was administered primarily by Japanese Christian women; the dedication of Yoshimi Shizue is best known in this regard.26)
It has also been argued that the staff of this institution took Hull House as their example (even though Hull House was not a Christian settlement, according to Addams).27)
The Shin Fujin Kyo¯kai (New Women’s Association, hereafter the Association), founded by Hiratsuka Raicho¯, is an example of an organization developed solely by Japanese women. As the founding editor of Seito¯ (Bluestocking, first published in 1911), Raicho¯ proclaimed in the inaugural issue, “in the beginning, woman was the sun,” exhorting women to discover their own voices and liberate themselves. She is considered the symbol of the women’s liberation movement in Japan. Raicho¯ was supported by her colleague Ichikawa Fusae.28)
It is not widely known, however, that Hull House served as the model for the Association. Previous scholarship on the Association has been done from the perspective of the women’s suffrage movement, resulting in the elision of the social reform components─such as laborer education, care of women and children, and motherhood protection─that were critical motivating factors behind the founding of the Association.29)
The intent to form the New Women’s Association was announced at the Kansai Fujinkai (Kansai [Western Japan] Women’s Association) Conference held in
────────────────────────────────────────── 26) Yoshimi Shizue (1897−1972), who majored in English literature at Japan Women’s University, became a teacher after graduating, but illness forced her to quit. She was baptized as a Christian in 1924. Afterward, she deepened her interest in social work, and was sent by the Ko¯bo¯kan settlement to the United States in 1927 to study social work. She studied at the New York School of Social Work for two years. After returning to Japan, she was appointed director of the Ko¯bo¯kan. After World War II, though primarily in the role of an administrator, she continued her involvement with social work until her death. See Segawa Kazuo, Yoshimi Shizue (Tokyo: O¯ zorasha, 2001).
27) Ogawa, 360, 362.
28) Ichikawa Fusae (1893−1981) is well known as an activist and politician. Because of an internal rift in the Shin Fujin Kyo¯kai (New Women’s Association), she went to the United States, and after returning to Japan, she became a major force behind the Japanese women’s suffrage movement through her role as the head of the Fusen Kakutoku Do¯mei (Women’s Suffrage League). After World War II, she helped to elevate the position of women through her role as a member of the Diet. See Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 58−61, 127. On Addams’s influence on Ichikawa, see Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil, “Women in an Expanding Nation,” in Through Women’s Eyes, 381. 29) The material on the Shin Fujin Kyo¯kai (New Women’s Association) is taken from Imai Konomi, “Shin Fujin Kyo¯kai,” in Shakai fukushi shiso¯ to shite no bosei hogo ronso¯: “sai” o meguru undo¯shi (The Motherhood Protection Debate from the Perspective of Social Work: Exploring Difference in Movement History) (Tokyo: Domesu Shuppan, 2005), especially 84− 138.
November 1919. The following March, the Association held its formal inauguration ceremony with Oku Mumeo as its director. Its mission statement can also be found in the inaugural issue of the organization’s journal Josei Do¯mei (Women’s League).30)
In this 1920 statement, Raicho¯ asserted that her activities from the earlier Seito¯ (Bluestocking) period were parallel to that part of the women’s movement in the West that focused on psychology and sought to liberate women by providing them with personal freedom. She confessed, however, that her earlier activities were woefully underdeveloped because they were not based on an awareness of social concerns and because the movement was only conceptual, without practical applications. She reaffirmed her commitment to the rights of motherhood as laid out by Ellen Key was a renowned Swedish thinker on mothers’ rights.
Raicho¯’s position in this 1920 article rearticulated the points she had made during the so-called motherhood protection debate, carried out in 1918−1919 between her and feminist writer and activist Yosano Akiko. The main theme in this debate centered on whether or not childrearing and wage labor could be considered compatible. Yosano Akiko, who advocated women’s rights, argued that women could simultaneously work outside the home and care for their children. In contrast, Raicho¯ argued that under the conditions of the time, doing so was impossible. Furthermore, she believed that to protect motherhood, it was necessary for the state to provide mothers with financial assistance so that they could care for their children while at the same time financially providing for themselves and their children. In other words, in the article outlining the Association’s position, Raicho¯ built upon her argument during the motherhood debate by including women, mothers, and children among those whose rights needed to be protected through social reform. Her pursuit of suffrage was for the purpose of bringing this about. Her model was the activity undertaken by Jane Addams’s Hull House.31)
Ichikawa wrote later that when she and Raicho¯ were preparing to open their own institution, they read Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull House (published in 1910) in order to develop a framework for a new women’s institution.32)
Yamada Waka, who was the first person with whom they shared this idea, reflected on these events in an article she wrote later: “When one observes [the Association’s]
────────────────────────────────────────── 30) Hiratsuka Raicho¯, “Shakai kaizo¯ ni taisuru fujin no shimei: ‘Josei do¯mei’ sokan no ji ni kaete” (“Women’s Calling in Social Transformation: On the Occasion of the Publication of “Josei Domei”), Josei Domei 1, no.1 (October 1920): 2−11.
31) For Addams’s ideas about women’s roles and motherhood protection, see Anne Firor Scott, “Jane Addams,” in Making the Invisible Woman Visible (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 118.
32) “Jien Adamusu wo shinobi heiwa wo kataru kai,” (“Society for Peace and in Remembrance of Jane Addams”), Fusen 6, no.1 (1932): 16−26.
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activities, it is clear that Hull House in Chicago was the primary influence. I am certain that Miss Raicho¯ borrowed many of her ideas from Hull House.”33)
Moreover, it is apparent when reading the Association’s organizational rules that they were heavily influenced by Hull House. For instance, the activities outlined in article 3 of the rules─such as holding speeches that address social and quality-of-life problems related to women and labor; establishing a school for working women; publishing a women’s labor newspaper; and establishing the foundations for a women’s labor union, counseling, job placement, matchmaking, and classes for women’s universities34)
─demonstrate the similarities between the two institutions. In particular, it is apparent from the intent to “build a women’s institute that includes office and meeting spaces, classrooms, a women’s boardinghouse, a women’s cafeteria, entertainment and exercise facilities, and a library” that the women’s institute was based on the Hull House model. When Ichikawa left the institution and went to America, she visited Chicago and remarked upon seeing Hull House, “So this is the model of the women’s institution that Raicho¯ showed me a picture of.”35)
Ichikawa’s reference to a “women’s institution” reflects the real opportunities that Hull House provided for talented women and the large proportion of women in leadership roles. Hull House had both male and female residents and served both women and men from the neighborhood, however; it was not exclusively a women’s institution.
Why did Raicho¯ select Jane Addams’s work as the model for fulfilling Ellen Key’s motherhood protection ideas? This decision was greatly influenced by a trip Raicho¯ took in the summer of 1919 as part of a speaking tour to Aichi Prefecture, when she had the opportunity to visit a textile factory. This experience gave her a new appreciation for the plight of children and women factory laborers. Confronted with the conditions faced by young female workers in Nagoya, Raicho¯ described their situation as “hell” and swore to protect the rights of children.36)
After returning to Tokyo, Raicho¯ continued to explore labor issues by visiting factories and attending rallies of female laborers; she was repeatedly astonished at their working conditions and poor state of health. At the same time, Raicho¯ felt that these women
────────────────────────────────────────── 33) Yamada Waka, “Shin Fujin Kyo¯kai no so¯ritsu to Haru Hausu no jigyo¯,” (“The Establishment of the New Women’s Association and the Activities of Hull House”), in Shakai ni nukazuku onna (Women Who Prostrate Themselves before Society) (Tokyo: Ko¯bundo¯, 1920), 256−265.
34) Hiratsuka Raicho¯, Genshi, Josei ha taiyo¯ de atta (In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun), vol.3 (Tokyo: O¯ tsuki shoten, 1992), 109; Hiratsuka, “Shin Fujin Kyokai Kiyaku,” Josei Domei 1, no.1 (October 1920).
35) Ichikawa Fusae, Ichikawa Fusai Jiden (Senzen Hen) (Autobiography of Ichikawa Fusae [prewar volume]) (Tokyo: Shinjuku Shobo¯, 1974), 107.
36) Kokumin Shinbun, September 12, 1919.
were too “lacking in knowledge, education, and self-awareness.” She considered it “the responsibility of women of the educated classes” to serve in “these women’s stead to expose their impoverished lives to the public, appealing to its good will . . . [and] proclaiming the urgency of working towards the protection of women laborers as well as the necessity to bring about laws that would protect these women” and the need to help these women form labor unions.37)
From this perspective, it is not surprising that Raicho¯, given her concern for the protection of mothers and children as well as problems faced by child and women laborers, chose Hull House’s style of work as one aspect of the women’s liberation movement. Hull House engaged with similar issues and was able to find a certain amount of success. Not only that but also the type of legislation that Raicho¯ advocated to protect mothers and children had been passed by the state of Illinois in 191138)
in the form of “pensions” to mothers, and the residents of Hull House had been instrumental in making this a reality. Then who served as the link between Raicho¯ and Hull House? That role belonged to Yamada Waka, who was one of Raicho¯’s closest friends, and to two people whom Raicho¯ met when she gave a speech in Aichi Prefecture: Kagawa Toyohiko and Takanashi (Tanaka) Takako.
Yamada Waka had been deceived and sold into prostitution in the United States. In San Francisco, where she escaped, she sought refuge at Cameron House, a relief settlement operated by the Presbyterian Church. It is believed that she stayed there from 1903 to 1905. Baptized during this time, she later married Yamada Kakichi.39)
After returning to Japan, Kakichi opened a school for language and social studies, and Waka made her authorial debut in Seito¯ in 1913, beginning a role as a female pundit. At the time, Raicho¯, who was acquainted with the Yamadas, moved next door to them to study Ellen Key’s writings and other social theory at the school. Yamada Waka, who was also influenced by Ellen Key, entered the motherhood protection debate after it had started and presented the new Illinois law granting mothers’ aid to support Raicho¯’s position.40)
It is certain that as part of this
────────────────────────────────────────── 37) Raicho¯, “Hamon (Zakkan)” (“Sensation [Miscellaneous Thoughts”]), Josei Domei 5 (February
1921): 23−24.
38) See Joan Gittens, Poor Relations: The Children of the State in Illinois, 1818−1990, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 52.
39) For more on Yamada Waka, see Yamazaki Tomoko, Ameyukisan no uta (The Song of a Girl Going to America) (Tokyo: Bungei shunju, 1978); on Waka’s life at Cameron House, see Rumi Yasutake, Transnational Women’s Activism: The United States, Japan, and Japanese Immigrant Communities in California, 1859−1920 (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 115− 116.
40) Yamada Waka, “Fujin mondai kaiketsu no do¯tei to shite no shakai hoken” (“Social Insurance as a Step in Solving the Woman Problem”), Taiyo¯ 25, no.7 (June 1919): 67−96, republished in Onna, Hito, Haha (Woman, Person, Mother) (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan Fukkokuban, 1986).
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debate, Waka, along with Kakichi, introduced Raicho¯ to Hull House activities.41)
In the summer of 1919, Raicho¯ traveled with Yamada Waka to Aichi Prefecture to speak at the Summer Women’s Conference organized by Nagoya Shinbun (a Nagoya newspaper) and Chu¯ Kyo¯ Fujin Kai (the Nagoya Women’s Association). The factory tour mentioned earlier occurred during this trip. During this speaking tour, Raicho¯ made the acquaintance of fellow speakers Kagawa Toyohiko and Takanashi (Tanaka) Takako, both of whom knew of Hull House and Addams. Kagawa, who, as mentioned earlier, had worked in Kobe in a settlement, later was known for his work organizing workers and establishing agricultural collectives.42)
Kagawa had lived in the United States from 1914 to 1917. After returning to Japan, he introduced Hull House’s activities in an article he published in a Japanese social welfare magazine, and he also corresponded with Addams.43)
Takanashi (Tanaka) received a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Chicago, whose sociology and social administration departments had close links to Hull House.44)
She mentioned Hull House and its activities in an article that she wrote after returning to Japan.45)
For Raicho¯, with a nascent concern for labor issues, meeting Kagawa and Takanashi, no doubt, had a significant impact. Raicho¯ stayed up late into the night deep in conversation with Kagawa, Takanashi, and Yamada.46)
Ichikawa, who served as the guide for this event, wrote in her autobiography that after returning to Tokyo, Kagawa visited the Hiratsuka household and, with Raicho¯ and Ichikawa, discussed starting a women laborers’ newspaper. From this, it is clear that, that night in Aichi, the group had a serious discussion about labor issues. When Raicho¯ visited the Kansai area to announce her intention to establish the Association, she spent a night
────────────────────────────────────────── 41) “Jien Adamusu” (“Society for Peace”). According to this article, Ichikawa and Raicho¯ were introduced to the activities of Hull House at Yamada Waka’s home by Yamada’s husband, Kakichi, when they were discussing the framework for the Shin Fujin Kyo¯kai (New Women’s Association).
42) Kagawa Toyohiko, “Hinminkutsu shokuminkan jigyo¯ ni tsuite” (“On the Work of Slum Settlements”), Shakai jigyo¯ kenkyu¯ (Research on Social Enterprises) 6, chap. 7 (July 1918). 43) Kihara Katsunobu, J. Adamuzu no shakai fukushi jissen shiso¯ no kenkyu¯ (A Study of J.
Addams’s Thought and Practices in Her Social Reform Activities) (Tokyo: Kawashima Shoten, 1998).
44) Mary Jo Deegan, Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School 1892−1918 (New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Publishers, 1988).
45) Takanashi Takako, “Beikoku ni okeru shakai jigyo¯” (“Social Work in the United States”), Shakai to kyu¯sei (Society and relief) 3, no.2 (May 1919). Takanashi was also a professor at Japan Women’s University, married Tanaka O¯ do¯, and served as the female delegate for the first International Labor Conference, held in 1919.
46) Kagawa Toyohiko, Chikaku wo yabutte (Breaking the Crust) (Tokyo: Fukunaga Shoten, 1922), 227−228.
in the inner-city area where Kagawa resided, and observed his settlement’s results. Given that at the time of the speaking tour Kagawa’s talk was “The Story of the Slums” and Yamada’s was “Protection of Mothers,” it is likely that their discussion went from the results of Kagawa’s efforts in Kobe slums to the activities of Hull House. As mentioned earlier, Yamada was familiar with the legislation in Illinois providing financial assistance for mothers, which had been supported by Hull House and exemplified the motherhood protection legislation that Raicho¯ and her colleagues advocated. At the Aichi meeting, with Kagawa and Takanashi─both familiar with Hull House─present, it is reasonable to assume that Hull House was a part of the discussion. And Kagawa and Takanashi assisted Raicho¯ by serving as fund-raising committee and board members of the Association, thus providing practical assistance as well.
The New Women’s Association was established with Hull House as its model, but in reality it broke from this initial vision and shifted its emphasis to the women’s suffrage movement. This change was due in part to the understanding that women’s suffrage was a priority and in part to the difficulty of implementing its original plan as a result of lack of sufficient time and funding.47)
Additionally, internal disagreements within the Association significantly paralyzed the institution’s ability to carry out its activities. These tensions reflected the challenges Japanese women faced in organizing at the time, as well as ideological conflicts among the leaders of the Association. Raicho¯ had two children and followed Ellen Key’s approach of advocacy for the support of women and children, based on her notion of motherhood protection. Ichikawa, on the other hand, who was single and not as constrained by practical concerns, believed in the ability of women to succeed socially and politically by asserting their rights.
That two types of women’s activism─which had taken more than a century to develop in Europe─existed together reflected the unique circumstances that led to Japan’s rapid modernization and industrialization after 1868. In the West, movements that took social conditions into account developed after movements advocating equal rights and opportunities for men and women. The concern for financial support for mothers emerged out of the secondary movements, as part of an attempt to provide women with the opportunity to enter the work force. However, in Japan, since Western ideas entered simultaneously─and not in the order in which they developed in the West─pro-motherhood ideas developed before an appreciation for women’s rights could properly develop. While Hiratsuka Raicho¯ advocated support for mothers as a means of liberating women, in a country with a
────────────────────────────────────────── 47) This is a substantial point of difference from Hull House, which was able to gather significant
funds to support its activities.
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strong patriarchal tradition, the pro-motherhood perspective originating from a women’s liberation standpoint as articulated by Ellen Key lost ground; it was eventually superseded by one that advocated protecting mothers who were weak or in difficult financial situations, a perspective that contributed to the decline of the women’s liberation movement in prewar Japan.48)
Additionally, during this period, when laborers began to develop class consciousness, civil women’s organizations and laborer women’s organizations began to break apart. As a result, in addition to the conflict between the more bourgeois-oriented women dedicated to women’s rights and those dedicated to mother’s rights, there arose women dedicated to a more proletarian-based socialist women’s liberation movement. Moreover, among reformers were women who, though workers, saw themselves as petit-bourgeois because their occupations required secondary educations, as well as Christian or social reformers who, while being bourgeois, sided with laborers out of religious or moral reasons. Thus, ideological differences and class differences and alliances among women created a complex political landscape. That so many different types of reformers were drawn to the Association was due to Raicho¯’s selection of Hull House as her model. A program that used democratic means to assist women and children as part of social reform was highly attractive to many different groups. Raicho¯’s intent was that, by dismissing the categories of class and ideology that were the products of a male-dominated society, women would be able to unite to form a different kind of society that would care for the needs of women and children. And Raicho¯’s reputation as a supporter of women’s liberation attracted women of diverse ideological positions.
However, government scrutiny, difficulty in securing funds, and internal conflicts demoralized Raicho¯, causing her to have a breakdown; the Association, which was dominated by the bourgeois group, transformed into a suffrage movement. It was successful in having Article 5 of the Chian Keisatsu Ho (Public Peace Police Law) reformed, thus enabling women to participate in public political meetings and opening a door to the participation of women in politics. The Association, however, had moved far from its original intentions and, at the end of 1922, finally dissolved.
Nonetheless, it is still true that at its inception, the New Women’s Association was established with Hull House as its model. Why is it, then, that this fact has been forgotten?49)
One reason is that the Association has been studied only from the point of view of women’s history, especially the history of women’s suffrage.
────────────────────────────────────────── 48) See Imai Konomi, Shakai fukushi shiso (Motherhood Protection Debate), especially chapter 6. 49) Recently, scholars have begun to accept the fact. For example, see Yoneda Sayoko, Hiratsuka
Raicho¯ (Tokyo: Yosikawa koubunkan, 2002).
Another reason is most likely that Raicho¯ does not mention the link in her autobiography. And the truth of this matter is most likely alluded to in her autobiography in reflections on the Association. Raicho¯ wrote, “At the time that the Association was established, while I tirelessly advocated social reform for women by women, this was only reform that depended on men and capitalists to provide for women and children, and clearly was nothing more than an attempt to direct social policy or advocate social reform.”50)
After the dissolution of the Association, Raicho¯ put the women’s movement behind her, and in the Showa period (1926−1989), participated in the consumer collective movement. After World War II, she became a peace activist influenced by socialism. It is possible that Raicho¯ did not want to address in her autobiography her involvement in social reform activities. However, Raicho¯’s own articulation of her vision─social reformism─demonstrates her commitment to social reform, and does not change the fact that Hull House served as the model for this work.
Ichikawa Fusae inherited the Association’s suffrage activities, and the influence of Hull House can be observed in her work as well.51)
The settlement-style programs that the Association had not been able to implement were later realized by Oku Mumeo.52)
And after World War II, Raicho¯ put all of her efforts into the peace movement. Seen in this way, Raicho¯, Ichikawa, and Oku each in her own way carried on the work of Addams, and thus the impact of Addams on subsequent Japanese women’s movements cannot be overestimated.
3. Hull House and the Successors of the New Women’s Association
As explained in the last section, although the New Women’s Association had a short life, its three directors continued the heritage of Addams and the Hull House settlement enterprise. Here, the conditions under which the trio carried on the struggle will be carefully examined, and it will become clear how the Japanese women’s movement was influenced by the American settlement movement.
The founder of the New Women’s Association, Hiratsuka Raicho¯, as mentioned above, while engaging in the activities of the Association, found that those activities were put under pressure, the organization faced financial difficulties, and she had to deal with conflict within the organization. As a result, she became emotionally
────────────────────────────────────────── 50) Kobayashi Tomie, “Afterword,” in Hiratsuka, Genshi, josei (In the Beginning, Woman), 328. 51) Imai Konomi, “Bosei hogo renmei to boshi hogoho¯ no tanjo¯,” in Shakai fukushi shiso¯. (Ideals of
Social Welfare).
52) Oku started a women’s settlement in Tokyo in 1930. See Saji Emiko, “Oku Mumeo to musan katei fujin,” (“Oku Mumeo and Proletarian Women”), Rekishi Hyoron (Historical Review) (1980): 359.
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unbalanced and in need of a rest. Therefore, after the organization’s dissolution, Raicho¯ withdrew from women’s liberation activities. In the early Showa period,53)
she returned to become active in consumer issues. After World War II, through the peace movement, she continued to feel close to socialism; throughout her life, however, she never lost interest in women’s issues. Addams gave her all to the peace movement. Moreover, the socialist Florence Kelley lived for a time at Hull House. Thus, Hull House and Addams were influenced by socialist thinking. It is reasonable to think that later Raicho¯ would fight similar battles (for peace and women’s rights) under the banner of socialism.
Raicho¯’s successor in the New Women’s Association’s settlement enterprise was Oku Mumeo.54)
While Raicho¯ and Ichikawa withdrew, Oku, a founding director, carried on valiantly. Because of financial difficulties, personality conflicts, and other problems, human relationships in the Association worsened. However, the efforts the Association made bore fruit, and women were granted the right to participate in politics (when part of article 5 of the Chian Keisatsu Ho [Public Peace Police Law] was revised). At that time, trust among the members of the Association was beginning to decline. Moreover, shortly after this, Oku gave birth to her second child, who soon died. She sacrificed her home life to make speeches on behalf of women’s freedom, even though the audience often consisted of only a handful of people. Moreover, as a result of the conflicts among the members, she lost her will to fight for women’s suffrage. Once the New Women’s Association was dissolved, Oku began to put some distance between her and the suffrage movement.55)
Oku sensed that having just a few intellectual women lead the movement left most women feeling unrepresented and uninvolved. Therefore, in 1923, on the recommendation of Shimonaka Yasaburo of the magazine Heibonsha (named for its publisher), with five friends, she established Shokugyo Fujinsha (the Working Women’s Association). At that time in Japan, telephone operators, office staff, typists, and other white-collar female workers who required a certain level of professional skill were called shokugyo fujin (skilled working women). However, Shokugyo Fujinsha (the Working Women’s Association) was intended to include both women who were “working and living” and “housewives.” The organization published Working Women, a journal with the goal of promoting acceptance of
────────────────────────────────────────── 53) Showa, 1926−1989.
54) Regarding the statue of Oku Mumeo, in the biography Nobiakaaka to Oku Mumeo Jiden (Tokyo: Domesu, 1988/Japanese Cartography Center, 1997).
55) Notes on Oku Mumeo from this point on refer to Imai Konomi, “Shakai Undo toshite no Shakai Fukushi Oku Mumeo no Katsudo wo Toshite” (“Social Work as a Social Movement: The Activities of Oku Mumeo”) Research of Christianity and Social Problems no.55 (December 2006).
women’s becoming more active in society, including politics. The journal got off to a good start, coming out regularly and selling well. Publication was interrupted because of the Great Kanto Earthquake; however, the following year, the journal started up again as Fujin to Rodo (Women and Work). In 1941, it was again renamed, as Fujin Undo (Women’s Activities). In this process, Oku saw through her own eyes the extreme poverty of the proletarian housewives; as a result, she became more interested in their plight than in that of working women. For the housewives, meeting daily needs was more important than social revolution and improvement in status. To go from the pressing demands to be met because of daily hardships to social reform, women had to participate in the political process. Women themselves had to become aware that their lives and politics were connected and that participating truly had value; such was Oku’s thinking. Moreover, in 1926, she became active in consumer protection; in 1928, she formed Fujin Shohi Kumiai Kyokai (the Ladies’ Consumer Protection Agency) and served as its first director. However, because of social conditions that forced splits among the proletarian parties, this consumer protection agency was forced to dissolve in 1930.
As a result of Oku’s experiences during this turbulent time, the settlement enterprise was realized. In August 1930, Shokugyo Fujinsha (The Working Women’sAssociation) moved its offices to a rental building in the Honjo ward of Tokyo and started a settlement for women in a neighborhood cursed with the stench of oil, where the lack of child-care facilities was a serious problem. There, the first initiative Oku and the others at the settlement undertook was to carry out a survey of people’s living conditions. The survey showed that because many were working in small businesses or were self-employed, the lack of child-care facilities was a serious problem. The first enterprise the settlement established was a child-care center, Meisho Shimachien, to provide support to the parents and to enable a nursery school finally to operate. Afterward, a support center for expectant mothers, a clinic, an employment counseling office, a hostel that accepted paying guests on a nightly basis, a mothers’ group, a night school for women, a learning circle for elementary school children, a teenagers’ group, a group assisting those retraining to reenter the workforce, a group building houses by the sea, a group that sold inexpensive goods, a marriage consultation service, and other activities were introduced, one after another. However, as the war intensified and Tokyo experienced severe bombing, the institution for mothers and children was closed and the residents were evacuated under government order; other activities of the settlement were also discontinued. After the war, Oku was active as a member of the House of Councilors. Until she died, however, in 1997 at the age of 101, she continued to search for solutions to the daily problems of ordinary housewives.
Ichikawa Fusae continued the New Women’s Association’s struggle for
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women’s suffrage. At the time of the New Women’s Association, because of restrictions on mothers, which became hindrances to Raicho¯’s and Oku’s full participation in the labor force, Ichikawa had to take over their work. As a result, Ichikawa was driven to a desperate physical and psychological state. Therefore, in May 1921, in practical terms, she left the activities of the Association. In July, to observe the activities of the women’s and labor movements, she went to the United States. In America, she attended the World Social Work Conference.56)
At the National Women’s Party conference, she met Alice Paul and visited, among other places, the head office of the League of Women Voters. She had a very busy schedule. Ichikawa spent the first half of her visit in Chicago; there, while working as a tutor to defray her living and traveling expenses, she frequently visited Hull House.57)
That was probably because she was conscious that the New Women’s Association had modeled its plan for a settlement on Hull House. Because the Association dissolved, the settlement did not come about. However, before going to America, Ichikawa had intended to return to the New Women’s Association.
When Ichikawa returned to Japan in January 1924, she participated in the formation of the Fujin Sanseiken Kakutoku Kisei Domeikai (the League for the Attainment of Women’s Political Rights). The following year, it was renamed Fusen Kakutoku Domei (the Women’s Suffrage League). Later, as its director of general affairs, she became a central figure in that organization. The Women’s Suffrage League was, in prewar Japan, the most representative women’s organization aggressively demanding political rights. However, as wartime conditions became more severe, the organization’s original activities became difficult to continue. Instead, the league focused on assistance for mothers, addressing the problems of garbage in Tokyo, and political corruption; in these ways, the league closely resembled Hull House.58)
That is because it became the successor to the New Women’s Association’s ideals, including the value of a settlement house. In other words, the Women’s Suffrage League captured the ideal of women’s participation in politics, with a goal of equality between men and women. However, it also inherited the maternal-protection values of the New Women’s Association.
After the breakup of the New Women’s Association, that will to provide mothers with financial assistance manifested itself in the form of demand for a law. In 1937, a law granting financial aid to mothers and children was enacted. The forming of Bosei Hogo Ho Seitei Sokushin Fujin Renmei (the League for the Promotion of the Legal Protection of Mothers) contributed to the birth of that law.
────────────────────────────────────────── 56) Although this conference is referred to in Ichikawa’s autobiography, its existence has not been
independently verified.
57) Ichikawa Fusae, Ichikawa Fusae Jiden Senzenhen, (Sinjukusyobou, 1974) 58) Imai, “Bosei hogo renmei.”
The following year, the name of that organization was changed to Bosei Hogo Renmei (the League for Maternal Protection). The birth of this organization followed the lead of Fusen Kakutoku Domei (the Women’s Suffrage League). The person who became director of the League for Maternal Protection─a person who had been an advisor of the New Women’s Association since its beginning, when she told Raicho¯ of the Hull House settlement enterprise─was Yamada Waka. Ichikawa Fusae supported Yamada in the mothers’ rights movement, within which they gave their all to ensure that a legal system for granting mothers and children financial assistance would be enacted. At that time, Japan was in what was called the Showa Depression. Ordinary citizens were suffering from extreme poverty. Women who had children to care for and whose husbands had died, were sick, or had left them were in especially dire straits. However, the system of assistance for the poor and the Kyugo Ho (Poor Relief Law) did not provide financial assistance to poor mothers and children, a situation that resulted in some mothers taking their own lives and their children’s. The league had had a tendency to aim at acquiring both political rights for women and mothers’ rights; once the war began, as previously mentioned, it became easier for the league to make progress in mothers’ rights than in women’s suffrage. It was as if the torch had been passed from the New Women’s Association.
The League for Maternal Protection not only fought for mothers’ rights but also aimed to fight alongside the Shakai Taishu Fujin Domei (Popular Women’s League) and even the Musan Dantai (Proletarian Organization). The director was Yamada, who, since the mothers’ rights debates of the Taisho period, had been vigorously active in working for the realization of a system to protect mothers. Actually, although both she and Raicho¯ were stressing the need for a system to protect mothers, there was a subtle contrast between their positions. Raicho¯ demanded financial assistance for married mothers raising small children, but Yamada insisted on financial assistance for single mothers or those in similar circumstances. The latter idea came from the Mothers’ Pension of Illinois, which had been promoted by Hull House, as mentioned earlier. However, Raicho¯ thought the goal of the mothers’ protection law was to give women (wives) economic independence from men (husbands) and to free married women from the traditional thinking (“respect men, despise women”) under which they suffered. On the other hand, Yamada believed that gender roles had a refined feel to them: the husband was the breadwinner while the wife was responsible for keeping house and raising the children. The compensation that she received from her husband was her natural right, thought Yamada. Accordingly, she demanded that the state provide financial assistance for single mothers, who could not obtain such a “salary” from their husbands. Moreover, at that time, the Home Ministry, cognizant of the Mothers’
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Pension in America, adopted a similar policy; it was the same system Yamada had described.59)
Accordingly, Raicho¯’s and Yamada’s activities bore fruit: in 1937, the Boshi Hogo Sei Ho (Mother and Child Protection Law) was passed; it bore virtually the same contents and goals as the Illinois Mothers’ Pension law.60)
In 1935, Yamada established Haha wo Mamoru no Kai (the Association for the Protection of Mothers). At the time, along with other members of the Association, she was extremely busy recycling goods to raise money for single mothers. A portion of the proceeds went to the Haha wo Mamoru no Kai’s activity fund, which was later used to build a dormitory for mothers and children and a nursery school. Later, she retired from the position of director; however, in 1937, she became a friendly emissary of Shufu no Tomo (Housewife’s Companion, a magazine) and was sent to America. In 1938, during this trip, she visited President Roosevelt and the First Lady in the White House; she did her utmost for a peaceful relationship between the two countries. Furthermore, while in America, she spoke to Japanese-American audiences; they responded favorably to her calls for donations. These gifts of money and goods continued after she returned to Japan. With these funds and those generated by the Association for the Protection of Mothers, Yamada in 1938 opened the Hatagaya dormitory for mothers and children and a day care center.
After the war, Ichikawa, as a member of the upper house of the Diet, concentrated on trying to get Baishun Boshi Seitei (An Act to Prevent Prostitution) passed. After the New Women’s Association collapsed, Ichikawa’s relationship with Raicho¯ continued. After that, at Raicho¯’s request, they worked together in the peace movement. Yamada Waka, who had started developing day care centers and dormitories for mothers and children before the war, continued these activities for the rest of her life. Ichikawa served as director if the institutions for mothers and children that Waka established.; Yamada also became active in getting Baishun Boshi Seitei (An Act to Prevent Prostitution) passed. In 1957, Waka fell ill and died. Ichikawa lived until the age of 87. Until the end, she served in the House of Councilors, where she maintained a fervent interest in women’s issues. Even former Prime Minister Kan Naoto participated in her election campaign in his youth.
4. Conclusion
Thus, as it has been shown, the New Women’s Association, through Hiratsuka Raicho¯, adopted Jane Addams’s Hull House settlement as a model. Raicho¯, as a
────────────────────────────────────────── 59) Imai, “Bosei hogo renmei.”
60) Takanashi Takako, “Beikoku ni Okeru Shakai Jigyo¯, Shozen” (“Social Work in the United States, Continuation of a Paper”), Shakai to kyu¯sei (Society and Relief) 3, no.3 (August 1919).
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